Amazon isn't doing anything that Google and Microsoft, among others, aren't doing.
Well-run companies don't dwell on past successes or wait for their cash cow to die out before looking at new business opportunities. And they don't let fear of failure rule them. That is small company thinking. Big companies need side bets and if at least some of the side bets aren't failing, they aren't looking far enough ahead. Because today's side bet is going to have to be tomorrow's billion dollar business.
Think of Microsoft's XBOX or Android at Google, both (apparently) far from their baseline businesses of software and ads, respectively.
As as been reported repeatedly, Amazon is already a GE-style conglomerate or Japanese-style Keiretsu, an empire of multiple businesses, some of which are mature cash machines while others are money-losing startups just ramping up. What Bezos is doing is investing all the profits from the cash generating businesses into the startups instead of letting it accumulate as taxable income.
The shareholders, of which he is by far the biggest, get their cut in the form of higher company valuation and capital gains instead of taxable cash.
It's all a long-term empire building play instead of a typical short term quarter-to-quarter day trader play. Most of Amazon shareholders know this. The rest should simply sell and go gamble elsewhere because Bezos has no reason to change his approach: his game is still going strong.
